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Entertainment Fact or Fiction - Spider-Man 3 Part 2

MOVIE TRIVIA

When production started, the computer programs to render the Sandman and his capabilities had not been developed. As production progressed, these programs were completed but the amount of man-hours put in to meet the deadlines were astronomical.

The jazz bar scene took approximately 2 weeks to film.

Gwen Stacy was originally going to be captured during the climax. and Mary Jane would be the one to convince Harry to help Peter against Sandman and Venom. But it was switched to Mary Jane to better justify Harry's assistance.

According to Grant Curtis, in early production the Vulture was originally going to be in the movie, and Ben Kingsley was involved in negotiations to play him before the character's story line was replaced by Venom.

The demanding shoot in Cleveland meant that a section in downtown was closed down. The pavements had to be repainted to resemble those in NY. Traffic signs and electricity poles were removed for stunts. The shooting schedule also overlapped with the start of the MLB season for the Indians as well as the NBA playoffs for the Cavaliers and the heavier-than-usual traffic had to be re-routed. Despite all this, it is reported that the people of Cleveland welcomed the crew and didn't complain about the disruption the shoot caused.

Sam Raimi had previously considered Thomas Haden Church for a role in The Gift.

During Stan Lee's cameo in the film, he uses the catch phrase "'nuff said", which he used frequently in the comics to end short editor's notes inside the panels.

According to composer Christopher Young, the Sandman's theme was composed with two contrabass saxophones, two contrabass clarinets, two contrabrass bassoons and eight (very low) French horns to describe Sandman as "heavy and aggressive." Venom's theme was meant to make him sound "vicious and demonic" and used eight French horns.

The name of the character Mr. Ditkovitch clearly recalls the name of the co-creator of Spider-Man, Steve Ditko.

In the background, you can see a Charles Manson news article for the Daily Bugle framed and hanging on the wall.

The animators at Sony Pictures Imageworks based Venom's movements on big cats like tigers, panthers and cheetahs.

A scene of Spider-Man battling a giant Sandman at a construction site was previously done in the animated episode Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: Spider-Man: Unmasked!.

Sam Raimi stated in an interview that he has no interest of seeing Carnage in a live action movie, as he said that about Venom. However, he said that Toxin would make a cameo in future Spider-Man movies, without Carnage.

Some of the track and electrical hardware in the subway sets were on loan from SEPTA in Philadelphia and came from the city's Broad St. Subway.

Series Trademark: [song] During the celebration scene the band plays an alternate rendition of the Spider-Man TV show theme while Spider-Man ascends to the stage. However, the song is absent from the closing credits for the first time in this series.

The villains' meeting would have seen Eddie coming across Flint pretending to be sand in a playground for his little girl to play on. Talking to Flint, Eddie would have convinced him that his girl may be cured yet.

The font used for the posters of the play Mary Jane appears in, was originally designed for the first Fantastic Four logo.

Phil Saunders, one of the art crew members, says that production designer Neil Spisak was let go just a few weeks into principal photography. J. Michael Riva was subsequently hired for the remainder of principal filming and re-shoots. However, both Spisak and Riva are credited in the main titles sequence.
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John Dykstra, who won an Oscar for his work as visual effects supervisor on Spider-Man 2, had declined to work on the third film. Instead, Dykstra chose to work on Hot Wheels. Scott Stokdyk took over as visual effects supervisor.

The hospital set was the one used on the then just canceled TV series Strong Medicine.

The song that Mary Jane performs on stage is from the Irving Berlin stage play "Annie Get Your Gun".

The Ditkovitch family are named after Marvel Comics artist and writer Steve Ditko, original illustrator of Spider-man.

During breaks in filming, James Franco read works by William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer and John Milton.

The name of the character who replaces MJ in the play is Andrea Rubin; Sam Raimi's sister is named Andrea.

The song that Mary Jane sings in the film was also used in a nightclub scene in the 1942 film "Tarzan's New York Adventure"

Cameo
Emma Raimi: The girl who sells her camera to J. Jonah Jameson for $100 is Sam Raimi's daughter.

Stan Lee: the man who tells Peter how great Spider-Man is.

Grant Curtis: producer appears as one of the two security guards in the truck that got hijacked by Sandman.

Christopher Young: the conductor and the guy standing next to the piano player at Mary Jane Watson's rehearsal scene.

Willem Dafoe: the actor playing Norman Osborn doubles as a bar patron in the Jazz Club scene, as Peter and Gwen take their seat.

The team up of Venom and Sandman originally had Venom just offering the cash Sandman needs to save his daughter in exchange for helping him kill Spider-man, but during the battle, Sandman's daughter would come and tell her father that she could not be cured and was going to die, and wanted to die with her father being a good man, not a criminal.

You can see Flash Thompson in the background at Harry Osborn's funeral.

Originally, the butler was to be another illusion of Harry's, representing his good side. Even though this idea would have cleared up a massive plot hole (the butler waited to explain to Harry that his father's wounds were not an accident after such a long time), it was cut.

Immediately after Spider-Man 2 released, Ivan Raimi wrote a plot for the third film in two months. According to Sam Raimi, the film initially dealt with the concept of heroes with a dark side, and villains with a sympathetic side. As well as dealing with the "triangle" between Peter, Mary Jane and Harry, the Sandman was made the film's official "villain"; the screenwriters made his character, merely a petty criminal in the comics, the real killer of Ben Parker to further Peter's guilt over his uncle's death. Raimi wanted another villain in the film, and eventually settled on the popular villain Venom to please the fans. There was also the addition of a rival love interest, Gwen Stacy, to complicate personal matters. However, with all these additions, the story became so complex that Alvin Sargent considered cutting it into two films, before realizing he could not create a successful intermediate climax for the third film to lead into the fourth.

In the comics, Harry Osborn dies because the Goblin formula he ingested was fatally unstable, and was slowly poisoning him. Sam Raimi changed Harry's death to parallel his father's death in Spider-Man. However, in Harry's final scenes, his pale look could be a sign of the Goblin formula's effects.

Mary Jane wasn't originally going to be in the taxi in the film's climactic fight. This was changed during the middle of shooting.

The scene where Spider-Man throws an exploding pumpkin back at Harry, exploding in Harry's face, recalls a similar scene in Spider-Man. Green Goblin throws a pumpkin at Spider-Man, blowing off half of his Spider-Man mask.

In the comics, Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four is the one who discovered that the black and white Spider-Man costume is an alien symbiote. However, because movie rights to the "Fantastic Four" characters are owned by 20th Century Fox, it was changed to Dr. Curt Connors making the discovery.

The first live action Spider-Man film in which a main villain, Sandman, survives at the end of the film.